Let’s Make Some Noise
By Shawn Riegsecker, Centro Founder and President
Having been in online advertising since 1996 (I know, this makes me old!), I’ve seen the maturation and different machinations of the industry for more than a decade and frankly, where we’ve ended up isn’t too impressive or inspiring.
Traveling around the country speaking with both publishers and marketers, it appears that the industry continues to fall deeper and deeper into the buzzword abyss of audience-based targeting, behavioral targeting, ad exchanges, ad networks, retargeting, CPX, etc.
It seems the art of advertising has devolved into a mundane process of dropping cookies and tracking consumers, then hitting them with bad creative through small squares and rectangles on a digital screen – which doesn’t make the following recent statistics too surprising:
- Only .02% of ads are clicked on; this inversely shows we have a 99.8% failure rate (that’s a statistical 100% failure rate)
- 8% of online users account for 85% of all clicks (“Natural Born Clickers Return,” comScore, 9/09)
- Only 16% of users clicked on any ad; this means 84% of the online population didn’t click on an ad (“Natural Born Clickers Return,” comScore, 9/09)
- More than 50% of impressions and 90% of clicks placed through ad networks are fraudulent (“Mpire’s AdXpose,” Mpire, 9/09)
Hence, the decisions marketers are making when it comes to online advertising aren’t logical. We know how advertising works. We know what it takes to build great brands over time. Although the web represents a different medium, advertising and the fundamentals of incredibly successful advertising are still the same today as they’ve always been.
The five immutable pillars of great marketing are:
1) Right Product: the business produces a product or service that meets a need in the marketplace
2) Right Positioning: the marketing team knows how its product or service fits with respect to its competition
3) Right Creative: once the product and positioning are in place, it comes down to how it’s going to be communicated; the right creative strategy in tandem with GREAT creative execution is vital to success
4) Right Audience: marketers must ensure their great creative is being seen by the right audience
5) Right Environment: the environment in which marketers place an advertisement is critical to how that brand and message are perceived by the prospective consumer
The first two pillars are related to marketing and the last three are related to advertising. Unfortunately, in the online world, marketers are missing two out of three advertising pillars. Everyone gets the audience part as evidenced by all the BT, cookies and ABT industry hubbub, but without great creative and the right environment, the campaign will not be successful.
This leads me to such questions as: How did we get here? When did the industry decide to stop being creative and start relying on algorithms and cookie tracking as our marketing idols? Is this the best we can do for the brands we love and represent? What happened to great advertising and the building of great brands—can’t we use the Internet for this also?
This is a call to arms for the online publishing industry. It is time traditional media companies who pay professional journalists to cover important news topics and information make some noise in the industry and clean up the problems. A favorite phrase of mine is, “Act or be acted upon.” The truth is, the quality online publishing industry has been acted upon in the last decade by companies promising advertisers a panacea through targeting and cheap impressions on the web. And unfortunately, by working with the remnant ad networks and allowing them to buy or arbitrage your inventory for pennies and collect your data, you aided and abetted the industry that is now eating your lunch.
It’s time to put an end to it. It’s time we end the delusion the online world is living in. It’s time we start being creative again and produce really successful advertising—on the web. It’s time traditional media companies start to help advertisers understand the value of being associated with great media brands and well-respected content. Although there is a place for cookie tracking, behavioral targeting, and algorithmic-based targeting, without great creative and the right environment on quality sites, the campaign will not work.
Let’s get creative. Let’s remember why we chose to be in advertising in the first place. Let’s challenge each other, and let’s look upon the web as a digital palette to create great brands that resonate with audiences. Most of the great artists in the world work in the creative departments of advertising agencies. We need to help them unleash their creativity.
We look forward to doing something interesting with you. Have a great day!
Sincerely,
Shawn Riegsecker
Founder and President
Shawn is the Founder and President of Centro. He leads the company’s vision and is maniacal about pushing all of Centro’s employees to break out of the ordinary. The entire concept behind Transis, our media planning software, is to help agencies efficiently scale great ideas and creative executions across hundreds of media properties transparently versus blind network targeting. Click here for ideas and examples we’ve worked on with our agency partners for their clients.